Road to Somewhere
by Empatheia
Summary: -Gin x Rangiku- Run and run until there are no more choices to make.


**A/N: **For the March round of Bleach flashfics on LiveJournal. Second person, spoilers for recent chapters. You have been warned.

Enjoy!

**xxxxx**

_**Road to Somewhere**_

**xxxxx**

You know it's going to hurt.

Even so, you keep putting one foot in front of the other, eyes fixed on the back of your captain's head, trying not to think about it.

Battle.

Orders.

Duty.

It should be easier to think of it in those terms, but you can't make yourself do it. All that keeps running through your head is _bonds, companionship, love_ and the continuous silver ringing of his name. You travel to the battlefield to face and kill the one person in the world you most wish to save. Therefore, it is killing you instead.

Rooftops pass unnoticed beneath your racing feet. You would do anything to slow down, turn back, undo this terrible mistake before it is too late...

It is already too late. It has been too late for more moments that you can count on all your fingers, toes, and pieces of your heart.

What are you going to do? you wonder. When you see his face, when he draws his sword against you, when you draws yours against him, when they meet in a rain of sparks and screaming steel and there is blood on your hands, what will you do? What if it is your blood, on his hands? Will you let him take it from you willingly, as you have given him so much else of yourself that it would hardly make a difference?

What will you do, when the path beneath your feet runs out?

Your captain tells you to hurry, or you won't make it in time. Easy for him to say. His concept of 'in time' is drastically different from yours. If you go faster, you might be in time to save the world, but the only person in it you've ever loved will die, which to you is much the same as failing to save anything at all. Easy for him to say, because there is nothing in his heart for any of the people waiting for him at the end of this path but hatred and rage.

You have rage too, and no small bit of hatred, but that's not _all_ there is, and therein lies the problem.

What will you do, Matsumoto Rangiku, when they make you choose between love and duty?

They don't know how cruel they are. They keep Hinamori back, away from the battlefield, sure that it would be too unkind to ask her to fight against her own captain. They fear that her love for him will make her a traitor in the end. Why is it, then, that they do not afford you the same mercy? Why do they trust in your loyalty to them so much, when they have given you a job-- a purpose-- but he has given you life itself? What makes them so sure you will not lose to your own heart?

You don't know. It makes no sense to you. If you were them, you wouldn't trust yourself.

Even now, with only a few dozen steps between you and the battlefield, you still don't know what you'll do.

He will be standing on the other side of the invisible line dividing _our side_ and _their side_, _us_ and _them,_ but you know without even having to think about it that he will still be smiling. That curve in his lips, the crinkling of his eyes until they are so squinted they look nearly shut, the perpetual aura of amusement, these are all part of him and you know they will still be there when you see him again.

Do you have the strength to break that smile, crack those eyes open, make him come down to the deadly, painfully serious level you've lived on since he left?

Your heart is pounding so hard it doesn't feel like part of you any more, as if it has torn itself away to thunder against your skin from the outside. Your muscles and tendons are wound so tightly it's a wonder you can move at all. Each step hurts you, as if landing just a bit too hard might shatter your heavy stone limbs.

The fact of it is, the truth beyond the pretty veneer of loyalty, is that thinking of him still makes your breath catch in your throat with the want of his presence. You still feel warm and safe at the thought of standing beside him. Your body still hums when you close your eyes and imagine his hands on you.

You are still, despite everything he has done and everything he is, irrevocably in love with him.

The moment of choice approaches, arrives.

You stand on the battlefield. There are strangers, words exchanged, threats and plans you cannot make sense of through the roaring in your ears. He is close. You can feel him coming, as you have always been able to.

The sky tears open with a cry. He steps out, looks down, finds your eyes unerringly with his own.

He is, as you knew he would be, smiling. For a moment, however, when your gazes meet across the invisible boundary, that smile falters and he looks almost sad... like someone who has thrown something away only to realize its value later. You have always been able to read him and this expression is clear as sunlight to you. It is warm on your face, comforting and sweeter than anything else in the world.

You take one step forward, then another.

Your captain yells your name, correctly interpreting your hesitant falling forward into inevitability, and reaches out to catch you.

What will you do? What choice can you make?

_I can't,_ you whisper, knowing they can hear you. _I'm sorry._

You cannot choose them, not against him. You cannot fight this person who holds more than half of your soul in his pale, selfish hands. You simply can't.

However, neither can you choose him, because he is wrong and you know it. There is no part of him you could claim if you were to go to him now. There would be nothing but emptiness in the land of the dead. You would wither away.

So instead, you make the third choice, and run.

As far and as fast as you can, just as you did once upon a time in a lifetime far away. You vanish into the sky above their stunned faces and wonder even as you accelerate how you will ever come back to face them after this.

You will deal with that when the time comes.

For now, you will simply run along this road to somewhere-- anywhere-- that does not contain him or a choice to make. Until it runs out, you will force your tired feet onwards and wish you had chosen otherwise. Until you know who you are without him _or_ them, you will run.

They will search, but they won't find you until you want to be found.

This road is yours alone.

**XxxxxxxX**

**A/N:** Why can't I convey how hard I ship them in words? No matter how many times I try it always comes out somehow missing a dimension or something, like a painting of something round and real and solid that looks right but is still only oil on flat canvas. :


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